Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Cookbook Week: Fettuccine with Figs and Walnuts

The Chef: Elizabeth

The Menu: A highly delicious, very filling meal of whole-wheat fettuccine, doused in a cashew-cream sauce with figs and walnuts, topped with toasted breadcrumbs. A simple salad with tomato and red onion balanced out the extremely rich pasta.

The Goods: As we're sure you're aware by now, all the dishes this week are recipes in Robin Robertson's latest work, 1,000 Vegan Recipes. Robertson mentions that this recipe is one of her favorites, as it's adapted from a dish that her mother would serve every Christmas Eve. Which leads us to two points: one, congratulations to phrog from yesterday's comments! Send us an email, and we'll send your copy of the book right out. Two, for today's copy, tell us in the comments: What is your most delicious holiday tradition?

Mimosas are one of my family's delicious holiday traditions! But perhaps more relevantly, every year I bake up a batch of vegan cinnamon buns and give them out in holiday tins to all my relatives. Pretty delicious!

Every Christmas my son and I travel to Cave City, Arkansas to visit our family. My tradition is introducing my family to simple, yummy vegan fare.

I always make some kind of vegan candy with my grandmother (love the chocolate fudge from Joy of Vegan Baking), and the holiday meal with my parents always has Cornbread dressing with shiitake mushroom gravy.

The best is when my dad says, "If you lived here and cooked for me, I'd become vegan!"

Probably the *most* delicious is going to Candle 79 with my family when I come home from school - but my favorite thing to make for my family during the holidays is sauteed brussels sprouts with roasted chestnuts!

My dad wakes up early and makes my family mexican hot chocolate and then makes a seperate batch just for me made with soymilk!

After the gifts have been distributed and opened, we all sit around the table and eat tamales! Vegan for me, of course!With all the fixins' to boot including salsa, salsa verde, guacamole and I like Parma on mine.Suuuuuuuuuuper good.

One of our most delicious holiday traditions here has to be our "sucre à la crème", a sweet and creamy kind of fudge. I'm sure I'll find a bit of time during the holidays to make my vegan version of this old classic!

My most delicious holiday tradition is something my partner and I came up with during our first holidays in our own home. We planned out a special, fancy menu- portabello wellington, cream tarts, potatoes, pies- and we got up early to cook everything. It was only the two of us, and we were feeling lazy, so we just made one dish at first. Then we ate it up while we watched DVDs. Then we made the next dish, and we ate that and continued watching DVDs. And so on.

We had this long, lazy day in bed, eating a really gorgeous meal (in really long courses). It was so relaxing and FUN. Anytime we spend holidays just the two of us, we do that. And this year, it's just us! Woo!

The most delicious holiday tradition is making a Chilean party drink called "Cola de Mono", or "Monkey's Tail." It is strong brewed coffee with condensed milk, cinnamon sticks, and Pisco, a chilean type vodka! What a great way to bring in the new year. I also like a Winter Sangria!

Seriously, the tastiest holiday tradition started with a friend making chocolate truffles for our wedding six years ago. Three ingredients - crushed almonds, soy milk and dark chocolate - make the most awesome truffle EVAH. Our anniversary is in the holiday season and so it's a nice treat to revisit at this time of year! Thank you for the opportunity to enter!

I have two really. I make and jar a spaghetti sauce for family and friends. It's my great-grandfather's recipe. My sister and I always have a cookie baking day. Hard to beat the smell of freshly baked cookies and a day spent with my best friend!

Making hot chocolate from "scratch", using either skim milk or soy milk, sugar, and real Dutch cocoa. My youngest child is 21 now, but he still asks if I will make some when he comes home from college.

Instead of putting names on the presents for my kids (who are now teenagers), I make a puzzle out of it. When they were little there would be themes likes animals and the land/sea/sky animals would each be for a different child. As they have become older the puzzles are much harder incorporating math, histroy, etc. They look more forward to the puzzle than the gifts.

my most delicious tradition is vegan versions of all the yummy food we used to eat prevegan: Lasagna, peppermint bark, raspberry chocolates, etc.I love showing family and friends how delicious cruelty free food tastes!

Most delicious holiday tradition? Well, it's going to sound silly, but it'd have to be my Italian grandmother's nuggets of fried dough. See, she makes these elaborate Italian pastries that are naturally vegan, but the parts that are cut up and can't be re-used are rolled into little dumplings and then she fries them. They are so good. :)